Legendary by Stephanie Garber is the second book in the Caraval series.
At the end of Caraval, Tella took a leap of faith and died so that her sister, Scarlett, could win the game and free them from their abusive father. Now it is Tella’s turn to play.
Celebrating the Empress, Caraval is happening again and this time Tella will play the game for her mother’s freedom. After making a terrible bargain with an unsavory character, Tella must win Caraval and divulge the creator of Caraval, Legend’s, real name. And so she is thrown into a world of secrets and betrayals, love and loveless stories, magic and horror and a world where reality may be anything but real.
But this time… Caraval is more than just a game and for Tella, winning could cost her everything but win or lose, the game must be played.
This is a prime example of a series that doesn’t do it for me as a book, but is one I actually really enjoyed in audio. I wasn’t even going to read this one because Scarlett killed me at the end of the book… and improve much in this one but it was available at my library and I needed something else to listen to. And I really, really liked it.
I mentioned Scarlett… she was such a force in the first book but ended timid and run down by the game. Well guess who is still fragile in this one? Scarlett. But this was Tella’s story and Scarlett was only at it’s fringes. We get hints that she may have found her backbone again toward the end but I really hope the third book will be told from both Tella’s and Scarlett’s perspectives because I’d love to get that strong, adaptable sister back.
For me, Legendary was a bit more predictable than Caraval. Caraval surprised me and I was taken down several different paths, whereas in this one, I could see where things were going even if I wasn’t a 100% sure how we would get there. Which is why this one gets bumped down half a star for me.
I can’t wait to see where this world is going and what costs our cast of characters still have to pay. This one gets 4 stars from me.
That’s all for now!
-M-